


Poles

by equestrianstatue



Category: due South
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Post-Call of the Wild, or technically post-most of COTW but before anyone disappears off into the sunrise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 01:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16672159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue
Summary: “So what— I just point ’em down there and go?”Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Before they go looking for the Hand of Franklin, Fraser teaches Ray to ski.





	Poles

Ray trudged up the hill. His boots fit neatly into Fraser’s bootprints; his breath was a crisp white cloud in the air in front of him.

“You sure about this?” he called ahead.

“Absolutely. You’ll enjoy it.”

Diefenbaker barked, presumably in agreement, because Fraser didn’t take issue with whatever he’d said.

Ray stopped to catch his breath, and made the mistake of looking over his shoulder, back down the slope they’d almost climbed. Frobisher’s camp looked like a toytown, complete with little toy Mounties, away down the hill and off to the west. The hill was pretty damn steep. Ray whistled through his teeth.

“You think I’m gonna ski down _that?”_

Fraser didn’t even stop walking. “No, Ray,” he said, and then disappeared over the lip of the hill, Dief at his heels.

Ray struggled the rest of the way up. The boots were heavy. It was still a low-lying, odd little worry that some day, Fraser would drop out of view just like this— over a ridge, or into the trees, or behind a snowdrift— and never be seen again. It was the only way that Ray could imagine Fraser ceasing to be. The guy was bullet-proof, drop-proof, shatter-proof, so a mysterious disappearance seemed like the only way out for him. They’d write songs about it.

Weird, dumb thought. When he got to the top of the hill, Fraser was still there, waiting for him, watching as Ray caught up the last few yards. The ground flattened out up here, and then, a little further along, dipped down into a much more modest slope. Still enough of a slope to be a bad idea, maybe, but nothing on Everest back there.

“I walked this way yesterday,” Fraser said. “I thought this would suit a beginner.”

Fraser had carried two pairs of skis up here with him, and hadn’t even broken a sweat. He stuck one pair upright into the snow, and separated the other, laying them down flat.

“So you’ve never been on skis in your life?”

“Never ever,” Ray confirmed.

They were only taking one pair of skis with them on the trip. They were heavy, and took up awkward space, and it wasn’t like they needed two pairs to whizz off for kicks; they were for hunting or following the sled. But today Fraser had borrowed an extra pair, plus boots, from one of Frobisher’s Mounties. Ray didn’t think he was going to be skiing all that much once they’d set off, considering the occasional trouble he was still having just trying to walk, but Fraser said it would be good for him to give it a try. And Ray had to admit that while the image of sledding off into the great white north was pretty damn adventurous, skiing off into it might be a notch even above that. Like, man to man against nature. Bring it, mountains.

Now that it was actually happening, though, Ray had to admit that the mountains had kinda brought it.

“Right,” Fraser said. “I think you should put them on here, where it’s flat, to get a feel for the movement.”

Diefenbaker yipped in either encouragement or mockery as Ray gamely clipped his boots into the skis. This Fraser had shown him back at camp. It felt okay; the skis seemed to be stuck to his feet good and firm, which he guessed was what he wanted.

Fraser had a pair of poles with him, too. He stuck one in the snow, and held out the pointy end of the other one. Ray took it, and Fraser pulled him along, in a wide curve across the flat. This skis made a whispering noise against the snow, and the gliding sensation was nice, sort of dreamy.

“That’s not so bad,” Ray said, as they reached the top of the shallower slope.

“Exactly. So when you go downhill, think of it as feeling like that, only… faster.”

“And how do I move?”

“Well, across flatter terrain, you propel yourself forward by pushing your feet outward— like so.” Ray pushed one foot outward and immediately came as close to doing the splits as his body would allow. Fraser pulled him upright again, easy, no fuss, like setting right a puppy that hadn’t learnt to walk straight. Ray tried not to feel too much like he’d left his last shred of dignity back at camp. “Close enough. You can also use the poles to increase propulsion.”

“Going downhill, though, that’s just gravity, right?”

“Broadly speaking, yes.”

“So what— I just point ’em down there and go?”

“Not really. It’s rarely a good idea to ski directly down a slope, unless you’re heading towards an equal and opposite slope and you need to generate enough momentum to climb it. Otherwise, you’ll most likely go too fast and lose control. That’s the first rule, Ray: always keep control.”

“Right.” Ray was the best at keeping control. “So what do I do instead?”

“You need to descend in curves, like this.” Fraser used the pole to draw a straight line into the snow at their feet. “This would be a direct route down.” Then he drew a longer wavy line over the top of it, crossing the straight line three or four times. “And this is what you want to do. The wider the curves, the slower your descent will be, and the more control you’ll retain. To start with, you’ll want to cross almost the whole width of the slope with each turn.”

Okay. Made sense.

“So do you want to give it a try?” Fraser was fetching the other pair of skis now. He brought them over to Ray’s side, and clicked his boots in.

“Wait, wait. How do I turn?” Ray had figured for maybe a few more instructions before they got going, or at least a lecture about the history of ski pole manufacture among indigenous communities. “And how do I stop?”

“Ah yes. For now, you should do both in the same way: like this.” Fraser turned his toes inward, so that his skis made a V-shape, pointing forward. “Make your skis into a snow-plow.” Dief barked twice, loud and excited, sniffing around Fraser’s skis. “Or into a slice of pizza, yes,” Fraser agreed, “but I don’t think that descriptor is quite as relevant, do you? Anyway, this will slow you down, Ray, and stop you if necessary. To turn, slow down in the same way, then shift your weight from your downhill to your uphill ski. Does that make sense?”

“Not really.”

“Hmm,” said Fraser. “It’s probably easier just to do it.” He picked up both poles, and slid a little further forward, until he was right on the crest of the slope. “I’ll go first, and you can follow my path, slow and steady.”

“How come I don’t get the poles?”

“They’ll only be one more thing to think about. You can either rest your hands on your knees, which will keep you bent to the ground at the right angle, or you can hold your arms out and move them around for balance.”

Ray squeezed his eyes closed for two seconds, tried to keep everything in his head at the same time. “I’m supposed to be bending down?”

“It’ll come, Ray; you just have to try it.” Fraser made as if to push off, but seemed to be considering a final piece of advice. “Think of it like dancing.”

“Like dancing how?” Ray said, but Fraser had started to move, so he just copied him, leaning forwards, and started to move too.

It wasn’t like dancing at all. Although Ray had never tried dancing with two slippery planks strapped to his feet while Fraser shouted unhelpful things over his shoulder like, “Always be aware of the direction of your torso!” and “Ray, think about your breathing!” Jeez, Ray had been pretty sure that breathing was one of the few elements of this he might be able to accomplish _without_ thinking about it. As soon as he did, he shoved one of the other important things out of his head— like balance, apparently— and fell over.

Even falling over didn’t work properly up here. It was like it happened in slow motion, ending in an undignified collapse, instead of the quick hard shock of concrete or gravel. Fraser doubled back and held out a hand. He could pull Ray to his feet way too easily: Ray’d lost some weight, maybe.

“ _What_ about breathing?” Ray said.

“Breathe in as you rise up to execute a turn, and breathe out as you sink down and follow it through. That’s rule number one, in fact: keep your breathing steady, and it’ll keep the whole process in check.”

“You can’t have two rule ones, Fraser. You said rule one was keeping control.”

“Oh, yes,” said Fraser, sounding faintly surprised. “Well, they’re both equally important.”

Dief running to and fro between them as they inched downhill, barking delightedly, wasn’t doing much to make things easier. But they made it all the way down— and then they climbed back up and did it again, and again. Ray did start to get the hang of turning, arms stuck out like a kid playing airplanes, and Fraser showed him how to side-step back up the hill without taking the skis off, so that they left two sets of narrow indentations in the snow. But Ray still busted ass a bunch of times, even when Fraser skiied backwards in front of him the whole way down, watching him and calling, “Lower! Lower!”, like some kind of hellish Winter Olympics edition of Card Sharks.

Fraser skiied over and pulled Ray to his feet for what felt like the fiftieth time. “You leaned backwards,” he said.

“Yeah, I leaned backwards. Because I was going too fast.”

“Leaning backwards will only exacerbate the problem. Your skis will slip out from under you and you’ll lose control completely.”

“Well, you could’ve told me that before I went and did it.” Ray brushed snow off the seat of his pants.

Fraser was actually kind of a shitty teacher, which was a surprise. Ray made every mistake he could think of, and a ton of others that had never even crossed his mind, before it occurred to Fraser to mention whatever would’ve stopped him from going wrong. But then it figured, in a way— that was Fraser’s whole M.O. If you can do something perfectly already, why would you ever need to teach someone else how to do it too? Fraser might as well embroider ‘If a job’s worth doing, do it yourself’ across the back of his tunic. Right underneath ‘I always get my man’, and, probably, ‘If in doubt, lick it’. But then again, this lesson had been Fraser’s idea.

“You ever teach anyone to ski before?” Ray asked him.

“As it happens, no.”

Oh, right. “When did you learn?”

“I must have been three or four.”

Oh, _right_. Ray could imagine it, although when he pictured Fraser as a kid he didn’t look so much like a kid as a very tiny Constable-to-be. Same steadfast expression. The hat, even. “And did people keep telling you to think about your breathing?”

“I believe my mother taught me,” Fraser said, “but I don’t remember it.”

“Bet you got it immediately.”

They were near enough to the bottom of the slope now that there wasn’t much point in doing anything but climbing back up. Ray dug his skis into the incline, one-two, one-two, and Fraser did the same just below him. Dief whined at their heels.

“Go back to base, then,” Fraser told him, with some disdain. “We’ll be a while yet.”

Dief gave them the wolf equivalent of a shrug, took Fraser at his word, and bounded off over the hill, out of sight.

“I’d like to see you try it!” Ray yelled after him. Dief didn’t answer.

“Ignore him,” said Fraser, magnanimously.

When they reached the top of the hill, Ray said, panting slightly, “Let me try it with the poles. I need something to do with my hands.”

“It’s common practice for children to learn downhill skiing without them.”

“Fraser, I am thirty-seven years old.”

“They do serve as a balancing aid, but only when you’ve ceased having to concentrate on everything else.”

“Give me the goddamn poles.”

Fraser handed them over. “It’ll hurt more when you fall on them,” he told Ray, like he was letting a child make a bad decision in order to teach it a valuable lesson.

Ray slipped his hands through the loops at the top of the poles, and dug them into the snow. It didn’t make him feel a lot more balanced. He blew air out through his mouth, and looked around: at the way the snow picked the trees out in white across the hillsides, at the sun starting to dip below a mountain-top. Christ, but it was beautiful here, all the time. It got relentless, almost.

Fraser was watching him with a faint crease in his brow, and Ray sighed.

“Okay. Fine. I think I just wanted something to complain about.” Ray dug the point of one of the poles about in the snow, making a groove. “I suck at this, and I think I’m gonna keep sucking.”

“No you don’t.” Fraser sounded sincere; also, this was a pretty serious thing, in terms of the trip being safe, being practical, and Ray guessed he wouldn’t lie about something like that. “You’ve improved tremendously. Nobody learns to ski in an hour.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Oh, no,” said Fraser. Quite cheerful, he pulled back the edge of his woollen hat, pushed some of his hair out of the way, and pointed to a spot at his hairline, to the right of his forehead. Ray peered carefully, and could just about make out a very faint white mark. “I collided very quickly with a very solid black spruce.”

“I thought you didn’t remember learning to ski.”

“I don’t,” said Fraser, pulling his hat back down. “And that’s probably why.”

He gave Ray a long, careful look, the kind that Ray often caught the tail-end of, but rarely experienced from start to finish.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be thinking of it like dancing,” Fraser said, eventually.

“I wasn’t,” Ray admitted. “How is it like dancing?”

“I don’t really know. Distribution of weight and motion, I suppose. The rhythm of moving in harmony with somebody else. The somebody else, in this case, being the slope. Perhaps I just thought it would make you feel more at home.”

“I don’t think I’m in harmony with this slope, Fraser.” Ray stubbed the front of one ski into the snow, sending a small white shower spraying forwards. “Me and this slope, we don’t get on. We got some issues.”

Fraser gave him a nearly-smile, and then, maybe after consideration, an actual one. “Very well,” he said. “Use that.”

“Use my issues?”

“Don’t think of it like dancing. Think of it like boxing. Poise your weight so that you’re ready to strike, look ahead to where the blow is coming from, and then— there! Turn.”

“Sure.” Ray eased himself to the edge again. “I don’t think that can make it go any worse.” He held the poles back out to Fraser.

“You don’t want them?”

Fraser was going to have to teach him almost every single skill and process necessary just to keep him alive over the next few weeks. If it was all going to go as well as this, Ray was going to have to pick his battles.

“You’re right,” Ray said. “I will fall on them, and it will hurt.”

Maybe it was the boxing thing— probably not, it wasn’t like boxing either, but never mind— or maybe it was just sheer perseverance, but this time, Ray got all the way down without falling once. Slowly, yeah, and with a bit of a wobble halfway, but in one piece nonetheless.

“Wonderful!” Fraser told him, as Ray skidded to a snow-plow-pizza stop at the bottom of the slope. He had a grin spread across his face like Ray skiing the last few feet towards him was the best thing he’d seen all day, when Ray knew full well that the sunrise they’d seen that morning, breaking gold and brilliant over a mountaintop, had actually reduced them both to a brief silence. Sunrises, man: pretty low on the list of things Ray ever thought he’d be getting emotional about. Ray wondered sometimes if there was a whole different guy inside himself that he’d barely been introduced to.

“Better,” Ray agreed. “Getting better.”

They were losing the light. The sun had all but vanished now, with just a crown of yellow-white spilling out over the peak to their west.

“We should head back,” Fraser said. “But you really have picked this up quickly. We can try again tomorrow— and try skiing more on the flat, perhaps. And then, well, we’ll practice on the way, when we can.”

Two days to go. Still time to bail, Kowalski. Ray made himself think it all through, every time the reality of it hit him. Still time to hitch a ride on a snowmobile back to barely-civilization, and a four-by-four back to almost-civilization, and a plane back to the real deal. He played it out in his head, every time, to remind himself that there was no way on earth he was heading back to his empty apartment, back to the life left unlived-in for the past couple of years while he tried another one on for size. No way.

They had made their way back up to the flat again, and Fraser pushed himself across it. Ray’d worked out enough of the physics by now to just about follow him, drifting most of the way and pushing one foot out a little, without slipping over. Then they were back looking down at the camp, with its tin-soldier people, the car air-freshener trees.

“I’m still not going down this one,” Ray said. The ski boots were awkward to move in, and actually he wasn’t sure if he could walk down this steep a slope any better than he could ski down it. “Maybe I’ll just push the skis down, shuffle down on my ass, and meet them at the bottom.”

“Nonsense, Ray. You don’t need to really ski it; I’ll go down, and pull you along behind me.” Fraser held the poles out behind him to demonstrate. “You won’t need to steer at all. Just hold on.”

What the hell. Chances were he was going to be trapped in a ravine or mauled by a caribou within the week. May as well launch himself down what was practically a cliff face.

“Okay,” Ray said, and moved so that he was directly behind Fraser, gripping the ends of both poles in his hands. “We doing big turns, or little turns, or what?”

“Straight down,” Fraser said, after a moment. “Why not?”

“Because you said an hour ago that that was the worst idea in the world?”

“So I did,” said Fraser, mildly. “Oh, well. Ready?”

Yeah? Yeah.

“Ready.”

Ray heard the snow creak beneath them as they slipped over the edge, moving slowly at first, and then inescapably faster, faster; until the trees lining the path became a blur of green, until the wind burned his face and stung his eyes; until Ray yelled something exhilarated and primal and wordless into the cold air, and Fraser, three feet in front of him all the way down, threw his head back and yelled it with him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you can also reblog it [on tumblr](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/180280166792/poles-equestrianstatue-due-south-archive-of)!


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